


morning finds you (still warm and breathing)

by stillscape



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, please stop traumatizing everyone, please stop traumatizing the children, post episode 2x21
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 12:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14618574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: A hand rests on his forearm. A woman’s hand, not old, but too old to be Betty’s. It seems somehow familiar and his first, absurd thought isMom?He can’t turn his head to look, and wouldn’t be able to see much more if he could. His left eye is swollen completely shut and the lid of his right feels crusted with something—blood, tears, maybe both—but with the sliver of vision he does have, he registers a pale indentation on the ring finger. The ghost of a wedding band, recently removed.Post 2x21.





	morning finds you (still warm and breathing)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't write post-ep fic for Riverdale, _and yet_... so I have no idea where this came from, but come it did. 
> 
> Title from Neko Case, "[This Tornado Loves You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js2wh9saLZk)"

A hand rests on his forearm. A woman’s hand, not old, but too old to be Betty’s. It seems somehow familiar and his first, absurd thought is _Mom?_ He can’t turn his head to look, and wouldn’t be able to see much more if he could. His left eye is swollen completely shut and the lid of his right feels crusted with something—blood, tears, maybe both—but with the sliver of vision he does have, he registers a pale indentation on the ring finger. The ghost of a wedding band, recently removed. 

Not his mother, then. She stopped wearing her ring years ago. And this hand’s nails are professionally manicured. 

The owner of the hand must have realized he’s awake, because the hand tightens its grip. 

“Shh,” says a voice. “Don’t try to talk, Jughead. You won’t be able to.” 

She’s right; he can feel a plastic tube in his throat. He feels her hand lift, too. 

“I’ll call the nurses,” she says as she stands up, and then, a little sharper, “This may take longer than I would normally deem acceptable, but this joke of a hospital is even more understaffed than usual—the riots, and that poor doctor, and—”

_Betty?_ he thinks, struggling to form even that coherent of a thought before his eyes close again. _My father?_

The words “F.P., he’s awake” slosh heavily in his brain, and he catches the squeak of boots on linoleum and the scent of nicotine gum before the world goes dark again. 

 

 

When he comes to again, the breathing tube is gone and his throat is raw, dry, sore. A different hand is on his arm now, definitely his father’s hand; he recognizes it by touch, without opening his eyes. It takes a minute before his brain starts translating the low rumble of F.P.’s voice into words, and even longer before he registers that his father’s just talking, that F.P. has no idea he’s awake. 

“...take you up through the Blue Ridge Parkway,” he’s saying. “Almost five hundred miles. Just you and me. It’ll be the best ride of your life.” 

 

 

“His blood pressure is still a little lower than we’d like. He’s stable otherwise, though.” 

“What does that mean?” says his father’s voice. 

“I just changed the IV bag, and I’ll be back to recheck his vitals in two hours.” 

He hears the cart rattle out of the room. 

“You’ve got to get some rest.” 

“I’m not leaving him, Ali.” 

“At least come down to the cafeteria for a minute. Get some coffee, stretch your legs. You heard the nurse; he’s stable. And Betty’s here if anything—”

_Betty._

“Betty should be the one—” 

“I’m fine, F.P.” _Betty._ “I’m—I’m fine. I want to stay with Jughead.” 

He drifts off again, but not before he hears Alice insist that Betty ought to take another Ativan, and Betty refuses. 

 

 

He wakes when his bed wobbles—the side rail, he realizes; someone’s lowering the side rail. 

“Hey, Jug.” 

_Betty._

The pain is worse now, or at least different. Like someone is putting pressure on a bruise, if the bruise covered the entire left side of his body. 

_Right_ , he realizes a moment later. _Duh_. He tries shifting a little, and all his aches sharpen. But he’ll take this increased pain—hopes it never ends—because it’s proof he’s _alive_. He’s alive, however improbable that is, and the pressure on his bruises is Betty, tucked against him, precariously balanced in what little space there is at the edge of his bed. 

“The nurse is going to kill me when she comes back,” Betty continues, her voice a soft, sad almost-whisper, “but I don’t care.” 

With a tremendous amount of effort, he manages to croak, “Me either.” 

A fresh wave of pain shoots through him as Betty pushes herself up on one elbow, moving herself into his line of sight. She looks exhausted—hair down and limp, eyes puffy, skin tear-streaked—and for just a moment, his love for her pulses so strongly that all the pain disappears. Just for a moment, though. Then it floods back over him, so strong that he’s not sure which thing is responsible for the tear that escapes to roll, hotly, over his cheek. 

Betty wipes the tear away with the cuff of her sleeve. There’s a smear of dried blood across it and he wonders if the blood is his. 

“You’re awake,” she says, voice still quiet as she studies his face. “Don’t try to talk too much, okay?” 

He tries to shake his head, but he still can’t move it enough to make the gesture meaningful. 

“You’ve been here about twelve hours,” she continues. 

(The room is windowless; even if it had windows, he thinks, he wouldn’t be able to tell the time of day.) 

“Your dad and my mom went down to the cafeteria for a little bit, but they’ve been here. Your dad hasn’t… he’s been here. This is the first time he’s left your side.” 

“The Serpents?” he croaks. “The Ghoulies. What’s—”

Betty shakes her head, and has to wipe a tear away from her own eye. “Jug, I—I wanted to be able to tell you everything, but I’m not. I can’t. Not right now.” 

 

[In the moment, he feels a flare of anger—he _needs to know_ , and Betty of all people should understand.

But as a slow trickle of visitors come over the next few days, and he starts to collect bits of information from them, piecemeal—

—his father and Sweet Pea argue, in the hallway, about how the entire damn town is on fire—

—Archie accidentally lets slip that there’s a third Black Hood (“yes, Jug, I _know_ Hiram Lodge is behind that one”) and that Fred Andrews has been shot again (“but he’s fine, he was wearing a bulletproof vest”)—

—and Cheryl finally tells him what no one else will, that Betty’s father is the real Black Hood.

“He tried to kill her,” she says, matter-of-fact as always. “And Alice. Betty knocked him out with the fireplace shovel, which I understand seems to be becoming a bit of a habit for her. They took him away just before we found out about your noble but stupid sacrifice”—

By the time Cheryl and Toni go and Betty returns, he’s furious at himself. That Betty could have given him anything of herself, anything at all, in that moment…

His father shows him a picture of Betty, sleeping in a chair at his bedside with his beanie clutched in her hand, and he wonders why he ever thought he might be willing to die when someone like her not only exists in the world—which is improbable enough on its own—but has chosen him.] 

 

 

She sits up and reaches for the bedside table, blinking back another tear; a moment later, he feels an ice cube on his lips. 

“This is all you can have until we’re sure you can keep liquids down,” she says, slipping it in. 

He nods, grateful for even that tiny amount of moisture. 

“You look like hell, Jug.” 

He swallows. “I’ve felt better.” 

“How’s the pain?” 

He swallows again. His shoulder is the worst. “Not too bad if I don’t move.” 

“They’re giving you the good drugs.” 

A smile appears on her face, one that’s tentative and even a little wavering as she reaches up to smooth his hair, but it’s a smile nevertheless. He’s dizzy with pain and medication and love and all he wants to do right now is fall asleep kissing her. 

Instead, he croaks, “Can I have another ice cube?” 

She holds the cup of ice steady as she slips another piece between his lips. 

“Jug…” she says, and then she puts the cup down and trails her fingers in a jagged path down his face and he knows she’s thinking it too. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers. 

Betty’s smile disappears as her warm lips meet his cold ones. Then she tucks herself against him again and takes a deep, shuddering breath. 

His ribs throb as he tries to breathe with her, but he doesn’t regret the additional pain. 

 

 

Jughead wakes up when the nurse comes back to take his vitals. Betty doesn’t. Nor does his father, slumped in a chair on the other side of the room with his hand in Alice’s. 

“This can’t—” starts the nurse, gesturing at Betty. 

“Let her be,” says Alice, catching Jughead’s eye. The nurse doesn’t push it, and it occurs to Jughead that, much as he ordinarily wouldn’t want his girlfriend’s mother around just on principle, Alice Cooper is probably the ideal person to have on his side against the hospital staff. 

Betty stirs slightly after the nurse leaves, tentatively sliding her hand onto his hip, and whispers a few words that he can’t quite make out but understands all the same. 

“Me either,” he whispers back. “Never.”

**Author's Note:**

> These children. These poor children. Petition for S3 to be 22 episodes of therapy?
> 
> (please leave a comment if and when you can)


End file.
